Though general store manager Hollis Mosher III was
unavailable for comment, Rebecca Kramer, a regular
patron of the store, where she buys tons of fertilizer
for her garden and gallons of kerosene for her many
festive kerosene lamps, told a press conference, "I
think Hollis said something just the other day about
getting in a new shipment of hard cheese or something."

Another regular customer, Garth Register Jr., formerly
of both the Backstab Boys and the Spite Girls,
but now moved back home to become a country preacher,
told reporters that he actually saw some hard cheese
being delivered out back, earlier today.

"There was this truck," said Register, "and it pulled up
out back in the parking lot and the driver got out and
unloaded a couplea crates of hard cheese. Apparently,
though, he was on step 6 of the 7-step "Power of
Positive Drinking" program at the time, and had to stop
suddenly in his tracks and be immediately hospitalized
before he could actually make it in the door with the
cheese.

"When he arrived at the hospital," Register continued,
"it was actually a bombed out gym where everybody walked
around all defensive, claiming they weren't here for a
drug OD, but were here because of a simple allergic
reaction to an 8-year heroin binge.

"The doctors all walked around claiming the cure for
this was actually quite simple, and just required that
the Cosmos be momentarily shut down and then, uh, you
know, re-booted.

"'Because they are so injured,' one of the doctors said,
'these people can be fiercely competitive for even the
tiniest speck of turf -- so if you didn't shut down the
entire cosmos altogether, somebody would cheat and
then....' but he trailed off into oblivion, no doubt
distracted by the thought of some new arcane
neuro-surgical maneuver he could try out later today.

"See, he had been sent here from the future or from
another dimension, or both, in order to bring some much
needed advances in science and medicine and philosophy
to get the home species here out of a hundred year
cognitive funk.

"And once he'd imparted all the information and the
species took it and was now humming along with all their
new found knowledge, thank you, there was no longer any
reason to stick around -- but, unfortunately, the
vehicle for the return trip back to his home dimension
or time had been stolen by someone on a heroin binge,
who'd OD'd and died, smashing it to pieces.

"Stranded, with no money, he was knocked unconscious at
a bar in the warehouse district, and hijacked into the
neuro-surgery service where, after enough drugs, he
learned to be obsessed about it and about developing new
arcane neuro-surgical maneuvers which, he hoped, would
compensate the world, finally, for having so graciously
hosted that fuckin' freak show, History."